Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]
3.34 Fruit of the Gods II

“[Level Apple],” Chloe mutters through our bond once we’re back home and behind closed doors. Even so, we’re still quiet, avoiding verbalizing even the slightest hint about the treasures we have in our possession, ones worth far more than their weight in diamond or gold or otherwise.

The implications of such a fruit are… unfathomable. A way for any individual to instantly and immediately gain an entire level? I don’t know how rare these things are. I don’t know if we can one day learn to farm them or not. I suspect it’s impossible; the description, according to Lindsey, says that they form where there is a confluence of ‘vast cosmic energies’, whatever that might entail.

Lindsey is absolutely right; we need to keep silent about these things at all costs. Forget access to food or water or other essentials. This is the sort of thing that would cause some folks to abandon all reason to steal and eat these by any means necessary. And even the knowledge that such a thing might exist would cause pandemonium on a global scale.

I’m tempted to eat mine right now. I don’t want them visible, I don’t want them in my possession. I don’t want even the slightest chance that Mrs. Jacobs or someone else might stumble upon them and throw them away. Best case scenario, some rat or other non-sapient creature eats them, gains a level, and then causes a little more mischief. Worst case scenario, information about them goes viral overnight.

The problem is that gaining a level is inherently more valuable the higher in levels one goes. At level 39, I need nearly 80,000 Experience to gain a level. Considering the trajectory of Experience requirements as of late, I’ll probably need in the ballpark of 260,000 per level at level 63, which is made only that much worse by Experience scaling. And… beyond that point? It might take tens of millions per level when I get toward the mid to high 100’s. Not that this fruit will work past 63.

No, it’s too inefficient to eat it right now. Even if there weren’t benefits to waiting, I’ve already gained nearly half the Experience I need to go from level 39 to level 40. Hard-earned Experience which would be wasted if I ate this right now.

But there’s another factor at play. Getting this bit of extra power now might be the difference between living and dying in the next fight. Or winning the fight normally and having to tap into [Seraphina Overlimit]. One battle where I don’t have to use my Overlimit and I can more than make up for the lost potential Experience down the line, or have it in my back pocket for the most desperate hour.

And will they go bad? I can’t imagine that these apples are subject to rot and decay the way ordinary fruits are, but I can’t exclude anything as a possibility.

“Sera? You in there? Chloe to Sera!”

“Yeah, I’m here. Just thinking about all the implications. I think Lindsey’s absolutely right. No one must know about the existence of these apples. They stay in our sight at all times. We carry them with us everywhere, and if there’s even the slightest chance that they could be taken from us, we eat them. I know you dislike lying, but this is the sort of thing we need to obfuscate, distract, and otherwise avoid telling anyone else about for any reason. Not even your mother.”

“You don’t trust Mom?” Chloe conveys a bit of hurt in her tone.

“I trust Mrs. Jacobs not to do anything. I don’t know— or trust— everyone she trusts to do the same. And, I don’t know if you saw Lindsey’s eyes, but she looked like she was prepared to wipe out an entire city by herself to keep this information from getting out.”

“You really think she would? She’s not that type of person.”

“She’s a soldier,” I respond. “I’m sure she’s done plenty of unsavory things on government orders. Hell, so have we.”

Chloe sighs. “I don’t like keeping secrets from Mom, but, I have to admit that I see your point. So, what do we do now?”

“Tonight? I want to turn in early. This weekend? Stock up on gemstones, study the new glyphs we’ve come across on our armor and your new rod, and maybe I’ll start sketching some designs for new potential cybernetics for myself. [Cybernetic Body] seems like it has a ton of untapped potential, and I want to make the most of every part”

Chloe leans in and wraps her arm around me from behind as we sit next to each other on the bed. “Yeah, turning in early tonight sounds pretty nice. It’s… It’s been a long day.”

I nod. “It has.”

My original plans for today proved to have a bit of a wrinkle in them. Namely, that heading to Zackary’s place might inadvertently tip him off to the fact that we have those two [Level Apples] in our possession. His [Gemologist] class is… eclectic. He’s got a wide variety of spells stored in his wares, from elemental evocations to defensive abjurations like our [Last Resort] brooches that Chloe and I keep on at all times. And that suggests that he’s got just as many spells that he can potentially cast, with some sort of [Appraise] or [Identify] variant almost certainly near the top of that list.

Chloe and I did consider other possibilities, but none of them really sounded ideal, either. She could go by herself, while I stay behind with the apples, or the reverse. However, I’m still injured and Chloe doesn’t feel super comfortable going somewhere without me. And that is even before considering that neither of us want to be outside the telepathic range of our [Angelic Bond]. We might’ve only had the Skill for about ten days now, but it seems that neither of us wants to be without one another’s presence in our mind.

At some point, I’m sure we’ll have to be apart due to circumstances outside of our control. For now, however, we have a lot of other productive things we can accomplish while still remaining together.

The first of these is Chloe attempting to heal me. Unfortunately, this seems to be not just ineffective, but counterproductive. As she fills me with the light of her [Heal] spell, I get a pain building from my core and radiating throughout my body, a pain which is particularly strong in my right arm. My [Health] doesn’t go down, thankfully, though it sure as the nine hells felt like it’s going to. I’m guessing it was some channel in my arm that I strained by trying to pull too hard yesterday.

Even worse, the timer on my [[Ether] Channel Rupture] status ailment increases by another fifteen minutes. Although Chloe briefly considers trying again, I decide that the risk is simply too great, and there’s too many things that could go very wrong.

However, this gives me plenty of time to examine the second item on the agenda, all of the glyphs in our new equipment. I start with the [Level Apple], but strangely enough, there’s not a single glyph anywhere on the surface. There might be some on a nanoscopic scale, but anything so inaccessible is probably beyond my ability to even attempt to decipher.

I don’t think that’s the case, though. This feels… at once, ethereal, and at the same time, the most real thing in the room, even more real than Chloe and myself. I really do think that this is closer to ‘vast cosmic energies given physical form’ than Ethertech in the sense that I currently understand it.

On the other hand, I make significantly more progress analyzing the glyphs on Chloe’s new robes. In particular, there’s a new defensive glyph that I think has a lot of promise. In one sense, it’s similar to my trusty [Repulsion] glyph; the two of them share at least a few strokes, which suggests a common root rune forming both of them. However, this new glyph is considerably more elaborate and difficult to parse. Not quite on the same difficulty as [Gravity], something I can still only manifest with Chloe’s [Saintess’s Blessing] empowering me. But definitely a step above the glyphs I’ve used to this point in both complexity and power as well.

Actually transcribing the glyph into my sketchbook for further analysis takes a lot more time than normal because my sight isn’t anywhere close to a hundred percent. To do so in my current state, we have to go through a particularly tedious process of having Chloe attempt to draw the various components of the glyphs, followed by me attempting to decipher and reconstruct them based on hunches and vague descriptions. It is every bit as monotonous and sometimes frustrating as it sounds, even with us communicating through our telepathic bond. Glyphs are infamously persnickety, and Chloe doesn’t have any Skill analogous to my [Archangel’s Gaze] which assists in glyph understanding.

Still, progress is made. After four hours of working on the glyph, I finally have a reconstruction of the glyph that looks right. More importantly, it feels right. Even without my Skills active, I can sense the power emanating out of this new glyph.

Chloe stares at it with awe. It’s… it’s an incredible shape, and not unlike [Gravity], I get the impression that this is merely a projection of the true glyph, which exists in a higher-dimensional space, one I can vaguely sense but cannot interact with directly. I want to test it out right away. I’m stopped, of course, but Chloe’s next words startle me.

“May I try?” she asks.

“I–” I pause for a moment. The glyph looks right. It feels right. Chloe should have a high enough rank in her [Intermediate Ether Manipulation] to be able to activate it, and a high enough [Mind] stat to control it. She doesn’t have [Basic Glyph Manipulation], let alone my Manifestation variant, but that shouldn’t matter with the glyph drawn out already. She shouldn’t be trying to modify the glyphs on the fly the way I do when Manifesting spell circles in my mind. And, while perhaps not ideal, it’s not like she’ll get a [Glyphcasting] variant without experience doing the same first.

“Just… Be careful, okay? This feels like a defensive glyph, not an offensive one, but that doesn’t mean–”

“We should go outside, shouldn’t we.”

“Yes.”

We step into a small basketball setup in the middle of the neighborhood park. It manages to be even hotter than yesterday and the day before, but we shouldn’t be out here too long. Chloe steps forward, facing the field before her, my sketchbook in her hand. She places her hand on the center of the glyph, channeling her [Ether] into it. And as she does, a barrier of shining golden light appears before her. It’s… It’s so familiar. I think this is an abjuration very similar to Chloe’s [Saintess’s Cloister], possibly even the central glyph in the overall formation.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” Chloe asks.

“Yeah. This is powerful. It’ll keep us both safe in the challenges ahead.”

Chloe dismisses the spell. She turns to me, looking a bit winded, but full of smiles upon her lips and eyes alike. “It worked!”

“Yep, it worked.”

And with that, we quickly head inside, out of the heat of the day. I label my new glyph as [Luminous Barrier], the first in what I’m dubbing as ‘compound glyphs’. It does, now that I examine it more closely, look like a combination of [Light] and [Repulsion], something I didn’t realize at first. I’ve not used the [Light] glyph all that often, and my unfamiliarity with it prevented me from realizing the meaning sooner.

What is important is that it is a step more advanced than simply splicing two glyphs together with the bare number of linking runes. These two glyphs have become so carefully interwoven together, spliced so carefully, fully, and precisely that the combination is, itself, something that transcends both individual glyphs, and can be treated as whole, complete unit. The most important part, though, is not the compound glyph itself. It is that I can study this glyph and learn more about the grammar and structure of spells. For that, I have a lot of work to do, and not much time in which to do it.

But I am nothing if not tenacious.